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When Courtney Irby was arrested for turning her husband's guns in to police, she had an order of protection against him, one of the conditions of which was that he not possess guns. He could have been prosecuted for not turning them in himself. He wasn't. nydailynews.com/news/national/…
The decisions not to prosecute him and to arrest and prosecute her, then drop the most serious of charges against her, illustrate one of the least understood aspects of our criminal legal system - police and prosecutorial discretion.
This is why, while Black people make up just 13% of the American population, they are 90% of people arrested for marijuana possession in NYC, almost 40% of people in prison across the US and almost half of people on death row.
But since a lot of White people seem to have trouble understanding how this is the result of decisions made by police and prosecutors, maybe looking at the flip side in cases like Ms. Irby's is helpful.
Because police and prosecutors put Ms. Irby in jail. They took her away from her children. Even now they dismiss what she did as out of spite in the course of a messy divorce rather than because she felt terrified her husband might kill her.
They somehow have remarkable insight into her motivations. And he's still not being prosecuted for the guns. That by itself is a violation of an order of the protection. It's being presented by them as her being cut a break because things "get crazy" during divorces.
So understand and feel for Ms. Irby. Understand what happened to her happens to Black and Brown people everyday. Feel the same outrage and empathy. Put the same pressure on police and prosecutors in those cases.
